Things To Do In SW Florida

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and ROB GILLIES

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to impose a 100% tariff on goods imported from Canada if America’s northern neighbor went ahead with its China trade deal, intensifying a feud with Prime Minister Mark Carney, a rising voice in the West’s pushback to Trump new world order.

Trump said in a social media post that if Carney “thinks he is going to make Canada a ‘Drop Off Port’ for China to send goods and products into the United States, he is sorely mistaken.”

While Trump has waged a trade war over the past year, Canada this month negotiated a deal to lower tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles in return for lower import taxes on Canadian farm products.

Trump initially had said that agreement was what Carney “should be doing and it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal.”

Carney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s threat came amid an escalating war of words with Carney as the Republican president’s push to acquire Greenland strained the NATO alliance. Trump had commented while in Davos, Switzerland, this week that “Canada lives because of the United States.” Carney shot back that his nation can be an example that the world does not have to bend toward autocratic tendencies. “Canada doesn’t live because of the United States. Canada thrives because we are Canadian,” he said. read more

A plan to put a Walmart and a Sam’s Club in a new Minneola shopping district is sparking backlash from neighbors who say they were promised a walkable town center — not big-box stores — near their homes.

Minneola Marketplace is one of two proposed commercial town centers within Lake County’s Hills of Minneola master-planned community. The planned stores and their surroundings have been redesigned significantly since their inclusion in the project drew controversy last year, but area residents are still worried about traffic and safety.
“We know Walmart has a purpose and a place, we just don’t feel it’s close to where we live,” said Minneola resident Paul Steen, who lives only a few hundred feet away from the proposed Minneola Marketplace development site and just moved there in the last year or so. “We’ve made a substantial investment in our home, and we feel that the congestion that is going to happen from this development, and also the potential crime because Walmart is a little bit of a crime magnet, turns us off. We would like them to go back to the drawing board.” read more

By THOMAS PEIPERT, JEFF AMY and DAVE COLLINS

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Thousands of flights across the U.S. set to take off over the weekend were canceled as a monster storm started to wreak havoc Saturday across much of the country, knocking out power and snarling major roadways with dangerous ice.

Widespread heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain threatened nearly 180 million people — more than half the U.S. population — in a path stretching from the southern Rocky Mountains to New England, the National Weather Service said Saturday night. It warned people to brace for a string of frigid days.

“The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won’t be going away anytime soon, and that’s going to hinder any recovery efforts,” said Allison Santorelli, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected to come. The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned commodities, staff and search and rescue teams in numerous states, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said. read more

Meta is halting teens’ access to artificial intelligence characters, at least temporarily, the company said in a blog post Friday.

Meta Platforms Inc., which own Instagram and WhatsApp, said that starting in the “coming weeks,” teens will no longer be able to access AI characters “until the updated experience is ready”

This applies to anyone who gave Meta a birthday that makes them a minor, as well as “people who claim to be adults but who we suspect are teens based on our age prediction technology.”

The move comes the week before Meta — along with TikTok and Google’s YouTube — is scheduled to stand trial in Los Angeles over its apps’ harms to children.

Teens will still be able to access Meta’s AI assistant, just not the characters.

Other companies have also banned teens from AI chatbots amid growing concerns about the effects of artificial intelligence conversations on children. Character.AI announced its ban last fall. That company is facing several lawsuits over child safety, including by the mother of a teenager who says the company’s chatbots pushed her teenage son to kill himself. read more

If in 2025 you held a significant proportion of your investment portfolio in equities, gold or crypto, you probably had a great year. But now it’s time for you to review your holdings and consider whether you should be making any changes.

If you began 2025 with a diversified portfolio — say, with 60% invested in equities (in other words, common stocks) and 40% in bonds (including conservative investments such as money market funds, savings accounts and T-bills) — those proportions are likely different now. By the end of the year, the portfolio might have been 65% equities and only 35% bonds. If you are more comfortable with a 60/40 ratio, it’s time to rebalance.

Many financial experts believe that the stock market now is overvalued, and some warn that in 2026 popular indexes such as the S&P 500 may fall in value, or in any case not continue the growth of 2025. So, how do you find the right balance for the new year?

Planning in 2026

You need to decide now what the composition of your portfolio should be at the end of 2026. For example, do you want a 60/40 ratio of equities to bonds? Do you want to protect gains you made in 2025? What are your feelings about the direction of the stock and bond markets? read more